I get free post-it notes in my chewing gum.
I get free toilet paper with the newspaper.
If I use my travelcard to pay for goods I can enter a prize draw for a dish with penguins on it.

Explanations?

Food:
A recent report on regional dishes of Japan has uncovered squid with chocolate, lobster beer, peanuts and coral, strawberry spaghetti, sea-lion curry and fish sausage enhanced with milk and strawberries. Now, I'm all for a bit of experimentation in the kitchen but this takes the biscuit (with pigeon and grapefruit?) I was relieved when Nick who is visiting me turned up with a pork pie which I ate, quite naturally, with a cup of sake.

Trains:
It's impolite to use your phone on the train and most people reading on the train have their books covered in an anonymous brown cover so that you don't know what they're reading. On the other hand I've now seen people clipping their finger nails and their eyelsahes on the train. Go figure.

Also, I've been going to my Saturday job on the "Romance Car" which is a train designed for romance presumably. The most romantic thing is that you can swivel the seats round to face each other. They have a sign saying "Please leave your phones in the gap between the carriages".

Went to the zoo where it seems they let the panda out at xmas to welcome international visitors.



I was having none of it.

Also saw Elephants, Gorillas, Lions and Tigers. That sort of thing.

If you look carefully you can see my new scarf.

Had first day at my new Saturday job. Mr Suzuki's language school used to be big in the 80's and it appeard on television and in the news for being based on the innovative technique of English Language Haiku Nowadays it's not so popular and we only had a few students on Saturday. I had to go through some translations, help understand an English Language Haiku and just have a chat. Pretty easy

They don't have Christmas here, they just have the look of Christmas. They have chirstmas lights, Santa costumes and plastic christmas trees (certainly musical, probably robotic) but they don't have all the traditions like carols, day off work, family, figgy pudding, Queen's speech etc. It's just marketing. I mean there's no reason they should have Christmas it's just that they pretend they do.

They don't really have the statue of liberty or the Eiffel tower either. They just have big imitations.

I sent the photo posted below on Friday 20th October to the Japan Times and it was published today under the caption "Tokyo's old rubs shoulders with the new". You saw it here first!

I got a job. It's every Saturday, I have to travel out of town and speak English in some form. Start next week. Will let you know how it goes.

Have ordered our New Years food box . I think you'll agree there's "no messing".